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19 August 2017

Book Review: The Moving Finger

The Moving Finger (Miss Marple, #4)The Moving Finger by Agatha Christie
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Miss Marple doesn't even show up until page 175! How can you call this a Miss Marple Mystery, I ask you?

But the narrator, Jerry Burton and his sister Joanna are charming lead characters in a mystery that didn't really intrigue me or entice me much at all.

Jerry has been in a horrible flying accident and is sent to the country to slow down and recover. When he first arrives, he gets a letter. He turns it over "in the idle way one does when time goes slowly and every event must be spun out to its full extent."

Yes, life was slower in 1943, when this book was originally published. Consider this; "The human mind prefers to be spoon-fed with the thoughts of others, but deprived of such nourishment it will, reluctantly, begin to think for itself--and such thinking, remember, is original thinking and may have valuable results." One imagines if staying away from being spoon-fed was difficult in a small village in 1943, it is nearly impossible now with talking heads and social media screaming at us all the time.

At one point, a character says, "God doesn't really need to punish us, Miss Barton. We're so very busy punishing ourselves," which was about the only allusion to the fact that this was written during WWII.

And, finally, describing a character as speaking "with that maddeningly complacent confidence in herself which was her chief characteristic," Christie finally gave me the vocabulary to describe a type of person who I find extraordinarily tedious and annoying. I could never quite give that feeling that certain people give me, that annoyance and eye-roll-inducing tedium, accurate description. Until now.


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16 August 2017

Book Review: Murder at the Vicarage

Murder at the Vicarage (Miss Marple, #1)Murder at the Vicarage by Agatha Christie
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This is the first full-length Marple mystery, but she's almost a secondary character. The narrator is the local Vicar, who initially judges Miss Marple to be just like the other old biddies in the village, who would fit very nicely into the "Pick-a-Little, Talk-a-Little" scene in The Music Man. The Vicar thinks about one of them, "It is difficult with Miss Hartnell to know where narrative ends and vituperation begins."

But Miss Marple, while an inveterate gossip, also is the "type to notice things." So wisdom and truth come because she putters in her garden not only because she loves flowers but also loves watching the comings and goings in the neighborhood. Because she watches birds through binoculars and, if she also sees the activities of her friends and neighbors, so be it. What makes her charming, though, is that she is aware of her predilection for over-reaching inquisitiveness. It's her hobby. And she makes no apologies.

And thank goodness. Because these bumbling inspectors and constables would never have figured it out without her help.

"I wish you'd solve the case, Miss Marple, like you did the way Miss Wetherby's gill of pickled shrimps disappeared. And all because it reminded you of something quite different about a sack of coals."

"You're laughing, my dear," said Miss Marple. "But, after all, that is a very sound way of arriving at the truth. It's really what people call intuition and make such a fuss about. Intuition is like reading a word without having to spell it out. A child can't do that, because it has had so little experience. But a grown-up person knows the word because he's seen it often before."

Later, Miss Marple says, "I remember a saying of my Great Aunt Fanny's. I was sixteen at the time and thought it particularly foolish. She used to say, 'The young people think the old people are fools--but the old people know the young people are fools!"


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13 August 2017

Book Review: The Basque History of the World

The Basque History of the World: The Story of a NationThe Basque History of the World: The Story of a Nation by Mark Kurlansky
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Ugh.

Couldn't get through this one, even though I have a hearty desire to know more about Basques and Spanish/French history.

Tedious.

Before I quit reading, right in the middle of a convoluted section that started several pages earlier declaring it would explain the Basque beret but getting bogged down in so much poorly-told history that I threw the book down in disgust, I did learn a couple of things.

Basques have the highest percentage of Rh negative blood in the world. Other places originally occupied by Cro-Magnon man, like the Atlas Mountains in Morocco and the Canary Islands, also have high percentages of Rh negative.

The Basque language, Euskera, is not related to any other language. It has no Indo-European roots. At all. Which is remarkable because once those Indo-Europeans started spreading, they left virtually no European language untouched.

The only defeat Charlemagne ever suffered was at the hands of the Basques in 778. The story is told in the Song of Roland.

I wish I could hang in and keep learning. But I just can't read this darn book any more.



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07 July 2017

Book Review: Murder in Mesopotamia

Murder in MesopotamiaMurder in Mesopotamia by Agatha Christie
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I scrolled WAY down the list of editions to find this edition because when I pulled this book off the shelf to take on vacation, I realized that I bought it for 25 cents at the used bookstore that benefitted the Manchester Cancer Society in Mandeville, Jamaica. There's even a date stamp; 09 March 1982.

I don't remember reading it. Though I'm sure I did. There were moments in the text that I remembered. But I didn't remember whodunit.

I DO remember, as a young teenager, being enthralled with the setting; an archeological dig in the middle east. As an adult, I saw the disdain Christie had for the non-British vagaries of that society; the imperial sense of superiority. But I didn't see that as a kid; I superimposed Raiders of the Lost Ark over Christie's setting and, for a while, I wanted to be an archeologist. It's rather disappointing to re-read this as an adult and think "no running water?" "oh, how tedious!" "that sounds hot and miserable!" instead.



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Book Review: The Labors of Hercules

The Labors of HerculesThe Labors of Hercules by Agatha Christie
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I read a 1964 Dell edition that was originally 45 cents and truly fit in my pocked. Back when we didn't have phones to keep us occupied on trains and buses.

Enjoyable set of stories, wherein Poirot decides to take 12 cases that will parallel the 12 labors of Hercules. Since his name is Hercule (and his brother's name is Achille, though he only shows up here in a mention).

I don't, as a rule, enjoy short stories as much as full-length novels because once I get to know the characters, boom, the story is over.

For example, in "The Horses of Diomedes" Poirot is in a small town, gently pumping an old hen for information. He asks if she is acquainted with the classics and then reveals that the case he's working on emulates his namesake, Hercules and his taming of the wild horses of Diomedes.
"Don't tell me you came down here to train horses--at your age--and always wearing patent leather shoes! You don't look to me as though you'd ever been on a horse in your life!"
"The horses, Madame, are symbolic. They were wild horses who ate human flesh."
"How very unpleasant of them. I always so think these ancient Greeks and Romans are very unpleasant. I can't think why clergymen are so fond of quoting from the classics--for one thing one never understands what they mean and it always seems to me that the whole subject matter of the classics is unsuitable for clergymen. So much incest, and all those statues with nothing on--not that I mind that myself, but you know what clergymen are--quite upset if girls come to church with no stockings on--let me see, where was I?"

I would like Poirot to have 100 more conversations with this gal.


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16 June 2017

Book Review: The Ivy Tree

The Ivy TreeThe Ivy Tree by Mary  Stewart
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I didn't like this book at first because I didn't like the main character. At all.

Then plot happened, things were revealed, and I DID like her.

So now I need to read it again, because I think I'll like it better the second time knowing about her what I know now.

Good training for life, really. Try not to pass judgement; everyone has a story but you wandered in in the middle of the 3rd act and don't know it yet.

Also, this, when one character asks another to give her advice.

"Why in blazes should you imagine I could be of any help to you? I made a pretty fair mess of my own life, you know."
I half expected the routine and automatic response of kindness and reassurance, but it didn't come. She said immediately:
"That's why. It isn't the people who've had things their own way who--well, who get wisdom. And they haven't the time to think about what life does to other people, either. But if you've been hurt yourself, you can imagine it. You come alive to it. It's the only use I can ever see that pain has. All that stuff about welcoming suffering because it lifts up the soul is rot. People ought to avoid pain, if they can, like disease...but if they have to stand it, its best use might be that it makes them kinder. Being kind's the main thing, isn't it?"


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01 June 2017

Book Review: The Secret of Chimneys

The Secret of Chimneys (Superintendent Battle, #1)The Secret of Chimneys by Agatha Christie
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I visited my elderly uncle two summers ago and he implored me to take some of his collection of old paperback mysteries off his hands. I gladly absconded with several Ngaio Marsh, G.K. Chesterton, Earl Derr Biggers and Agatha Christie.

This was one of them. The edition I read doesn't exist on Goodreads. It's tiny. Pocketsize, truly, from when we carried books around to entertain us instead of smartphones. Dell. 1959. 35 cents.

It wasn't typical Christie. No Poirot. No Marple. Superintendent Battle appears (in fact, it is now listed as Battle #1 on many lists) but he is not the main sleuth. There IS no main, sleuth, really. The story revolves less around a central figure-out-er and more around a delicious cast of characters.

Originally written in 1925, the between-the-wars intrigue is palpable. A Balkan country called Herzoslovakia. Deposed monarchs. A group called the Red Hand. British imperialism in Africa.

Patently dated but completely enjoyable along the lines of one of my top five favorite Christie novels Man in the Brown Suit and Mary Stewart's Madam, Will You Talk?.


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